Computer users frequently utilize computing devices connected to the Internet or a database of information to compare similar items. Indeed, it is quite common for users to comparison shop for products or services through the internet. For example, a user may want to compare two candidate products before he/she makes purchase decisions. Traditional search engines return a set of Web pages or documents ranked according to their relevance with an input query. While this may be useful for searching for pages and/or documents relevant to the search query, the results often do not provide the comparison information the user needs in an efficient manner, if at all.
Generally, the user is presented with any page or document containing the word(s) provided in the search query, regardless if the pages or documents that provide information useful when comparing the searched product or service with another similar product or service. This forces the user to review numerous pages that are of little significance. Indeed, even when the searched pages contain useful comparative information, the user must conduct several queries and independently determine which ones comprise similar information among the different queries. What is needed, therefore, are efficient methods and systems for performing comparative searches for two or more related items, such as products or services.